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Quotes by French Authors
"But no one frees himself from being in love in three days."
"The only freedom supposed to be left to the masses is that of grazing on the ration of simulacra the system distributes to each individual."
"I will only observe, that that ethereal sense - sight, and touch, which is at the other extremity of the scale, have from time acquired a very remarkable additional power."
"I am never driven. Every film I've made has been an assignment."
"The idea of seeing everybody clad the same is not really my cup of tea."
"A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it."
"I had to think whether, after 50 years of hard slog, I was still lucid and fresh enough for the job."
"To live happily with other people, ask of them only what they can give."
"A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth. Instead of its bringing sad and melancholy prospects of decay, it would give us hopes of eternal youth in a better world."
"All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs."
"Work at the same time on sky, water, branches, ground, keeping everything going on an equal basis... Don't be afraid of putting on colour... Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression."
"You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly."
"For what the lover would, that would the beloved; what she would ask of him that should he go before to grant. Without accord such as this, love is but a bond and a constraint."
"The word impossible is not in my dictionary."
"In the Arab world, there is no link between the cultural habits of peoples and the ways of thinking and creating of modern intellectuals. They are two separate worlds."
"Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us. The most solid happiness can be shaken by the compassion of a fool."
"It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block."
"If you have everything, then you don't want to go on. It's the lacking that makes you search for something better."
"Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom."
"Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age, and to get drunk till forty; but, after forty, gives them leave to please themselves, and to mix a little liberally in their feasts the influence of Dionysos, that good deity who restores to younger men their gaiety and to old men their youth...fit to inspire old men with mettle to divert themselves in dancing and music; things of great use, and that they dare not attempt when sober."
"Without freedom of the press, there can be no representative government."
"There is only one passion, the passion for happiness."
"As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture."
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